I got into the computer business because it was fun and
something I have a
talent for. Now, seven or eight years into my career, I'm
doing moderately
well, but I can't help but feel like this isn't what I
should be doing with
eight hours of my day.

I've never gotten to the point of using terms like "ADHD" or
anything. In
school, teachers and counselors just called me lazy. They
told me in the most
exasperated tones they could muster about their confoundment
at my "choice"
not to be a good citizen and apply myself. They liked to
remind me that I was
choosing not to participate. I could never explain why I
did things the way I
did then, and I can't now.

Hummingbirds stick around longer than I do.

I feel like I went to bed one night as a mullet-haired
12-year-old and woke up
at 25, a college dropout working the last three weeks of his
programming
contract at a big damn microchip company. And now I have
just started to take
a look at things and realize this kind of work isn't for me.

Maybe it is. I don't know. Some people have told me my
code is pretty good.
I don't know if they're blowing smoke or what, but the one
thing about my work
that I can measure is how much time I spend goofing off
instead of working.

I'm really not sure how to go about explaining it. I'm not
the victim of
anything, and I'm not trying to make people feel sorry for
me, but after
twelve years of public school counselors telling my my
inability to focus was
by choice and that somehow I insisted on doing the wrong
thing, I get a little
defensive when the subject of my productivity comes up.
Sometimes the things
I am supposed to be doing become grating and painful, like
fingernails on
chalkboard, and the way I seek relief is to go read some
mailing lists for a
while or stand outside and stare at traffic.

A couple of years ago I found out about how the school
psychologists wanted to
put me on Ritalyn. My parents stuck up for me and told
everyone at the
schools (a) they were not going to medicate their child's
personality, and (b)
precisely where they could put their Ritalyn. It's good to
know that my
parents believed in me when I was a kid, since a lot of what
I heard was how
much of a disappointment I was. But once in a while I
wonder if those
sit-down-johnny-and-behave pills would have fixed things as
well as they
claimed.

Even now. I spend 80% of my day doing things that are
unassociated with my
job: walking around and bothering people in nearby cubes,
surfing the web,
staring at the ceiling. But apparently I get about as much
work done as
everyone else. I have tried to justify my actions in my
head by saying it's
better because I end up with the same amount of work by the
end of the day,
but I still feel like I am stealing 80% of my paycheck.

Now I am starting to think that I have to find something
more exciting than
programming to sustain myself. Or maybe programming
something besides network
testing. The suspicion still occurs that no matter what I
find myself doing
I'll end up unable to stick to it. It's kind of depressing.

Last week I was given the final date on my consulting
contract, which is June 30. For several days I was unsure
exactly how to feel about things. I felt more inclined to
sit and stare out the window than to get a decent amount of
work done. I feel awful about it.

I got a moderate amount of work done on mmo. I'm back to
where I was before I started writing any of the code for it:
scribbling little 3D algorithms down on paper.

One thing that seems to bother me is how cavalier people
writing other 3D engines seem to be about throwing in
incredible amounts of computation for small little effects.
It's like, "I got realistic reflections and all it took was
tripling the polygon count!"

Of course, I'm still at a very early phase and I may yet have to
triple my own polygon count.

I have one or two moderately fun things there that I'm
doing there. Not a whole lot of source available yet, but
I'm the kind of person who doesn't want anyone looking at my
code until I've taken all of the embarassing stuff out.